There he was presently convinced that his worst suspicions were true, for
Orlando also had not returned. He saw it all. They had agreed to meet;
they had met; they had eloped and were gone! His beady eyes were those
of serpents watching for the instant to strike, and his words burst over
the head of Orlando's mother like shrapnel.
For once, however, the futile, fantastic mother rose higher than herself,
and declared that her son had never run away from, or with, anything in
his life; that he--Joel Mazarine--had never had anything worth her son's
running away with; and that her son, when he came back, would make him
ask forgiveness as he had never asked it of his God.
Indeed, the gaudy little lady stood in her doorway and chattered her
maledictions after him, as he rode back again towards Tralee muttering
curses which no class leader in the Methodist Church ought even to quote
for pious purposes.
Joel Mazarine had flattered himself that he had everything life could
give--money, property and a garden of youth in which his old age could
loiter and be glad; and that he should be defied suddenly and his garden
made desolate, that the lines of his good fortune should be crossed,
caused him to rage like any heathen.
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